Following my previous post on Food Photography: Rice and Stew, I decided to do some work with Okro.

I’m not sure which is the most appropriate name or spelling but okra, okro, ochro or “ladies’ fingers” are used interchangeably. Eaten by a variety of cultures including Asian, Ethiopian and West African, it is considered to be medicinal and excellent for a bowel movement.

While some of these cultures eat the green pods raw, we Nigerians prefer it, like most foods, cooked and well done. Its edible green seed pods is a primary ingredient in Okra soup, which is eaten by almost every tribe here.

I’ll be honest and admit that I wasn’t prepared for how beautiful this Okro looked on camera. Zooming in close, my lenses picked up on those tiny delicate hairs on the okro pod, giving so much texture to this simple vegetable. I fell in love with the pentagon shape of the okra slices and the small white seeds. I wish I had a proper microlens so I could really capture the intricate details of this beautiful vegetable.

I realise I should have shot the final soup, but the pot was already empty at the time. I shot a few other soup ingredients just for the fun of it. The crayfish was fresh and its colour was so rich, it was only right that I give it a shot. Ogbono and Egusi made a minor feature, even though I’d probably shoot them independently and in more detail later.

Like I said in my previous post, I’m really enjoying dark food photography and strong colour contrasts and so I’ll probably do this for other objects of interest besides food.

In other news, people are stealing and using my images and I don’t know if I should be mad or flattered. I hope you will be kind enough to let me know where you see my image being used, especially if it had got Shutterstock watermarks all over it.

In the meantime, come celebrate 1000 downloads on Shutterstock with me! It’s not a lot of money, but I’m excited to be creating something people are willing to pay for over and over again. I’m happy to be creating value. I’m working towards the $500 benchmark and with continuous work, I hope to hit that in a month.

To round this up, let me know what you think about these images and as usual, if you have any questions, leave them in the comments section below.

Thank you for reading!
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